Ethics complaint filed against Spirit of Knowledge school business director

Tuesday

Nov 5, 2013 at 6:00 AM

By Jacqueline Reis, TELEGRAM & GAZETTE STAFF

WORCESTER — Spirit of Knowledge Charter School may have closed, but the finger-pointing continues.

David S. Cutler, the school's dean of students, has filed a complaint with the state Ethics Commission against Darlene Frederick, the school's director of business and operations. In it, he claims that Ms. Frederick's daughter worked at the school as a secretary, reported directly to Ms. Frederick "and was not held to the same professional standard because of her mother." It also alleges that the daughter, Brittany Bender, lost $1,600 and that it was not reported to the executive director for four days. The complaint also alleges Ms. Bender was laid off instead of fired so that she could collect unemployment.

"My issue is that we have recently closed due to financial issues, and with Darlene allowing this to take place, and the severe mismanagement of the funds and business practices of the school, it begs the question, what other things do we not know about that were unethical and disrupted the education of 160 students," Mr. Cutler wrote in the complaint.

Contacted at her home Monday, Ms. Frederick said, "I think this is a personal thing. … There's no bad doings from the finance part, and somebody's trying to throw me under the bus. … It's slander, as far as I'm concerned, and I'm really distraught about it." By the end of the interview, she was in tears.

She pointed out that the school's problems weren't all financial. When the state put the school on probation in May, state officials noted the turnover in executive directors, financial instability, failure to keep enough people on the board of trustees, failure to deliver the promised academic model, uneven academic results, and lower-than-expected enrollment.

Ms. Frederick has been part of the school from its founding. Her daughter, she said, was hired by Eileen Milton, who was an interim executive director. "I removed myself wholeheartedly from that (hiring) process," Ms. Frederick said.

On paper, Ms. Bender reported to Ms. Frederick, but Ms. Frederick said that as soon as Paula Bailey became executive director in 2012, Ms. Bender reported in actuality to her. Ms. Frederick said she urged Ms. Bailey to dock her daughter's pay when she came in late. The decision to lay Ms. Bender off was Ms. Bailey's, Ms. Frederick said.

Ms. Bailey said in an e-mail that she cannot comment on personnel issues.

As for the missing $1,600, Ms. Frederick said that was money for students' martial arts uniforms that Ms. Bender left in a manila folder on her desk while she went out to do bus duty. When she came back, it was gone, Ms. Frederick said.

It wasn't the only time things have gone missing from the school, she said. Five laptops and another computer disappeared Wednesday, the day after the school's board of trustees voted to close, she said. Another time, a student went into a teacher's desk to take money, Ms. Frederick said.

Ms. Bailey said that one of the six computers has been recovered, and a police report on the computer thefts was filed immediately.

Police representatives did not immediately return a request for comment Monday afternoon.

In addition to being director of business and operations for the school, Ms. Frederick is also head of SOKCS Foundation Inc., a public charity organized to provide financial assistance to the school, according to papers on file with the state. The foundation's most recent filing on the state attorney general's website was for the fiscal year that ended June 30, 2012. At that point, the foundation was $6,652 in the red. It did not have any employees.

Ms. Frederick said the school's lead founder, Julia Sigalovsky, developed the foundation, which took out a loan to buy technology for the school. The debt comes from that loan, Ms. Frederick said. It's possible that the school's remaining computers could be seized as collateral, she acknowledged.

Ms. Frederick worked at the school when it lost $185,000 in 2010 in a real estate deal with Francisco and Edwin Escobar that went bust, but Monday she distanced herself from the transaction. The board at the time voted to give the developer a check signed by Ms. Sigalovsky and then-board treasurer Isidore Nosike, Ms. Frederick said. The Escobars had said they would rehab a building for the school but never did, and despite a court judgment, the school never recouped its money.

Also during the 2010-11 school year, the school's first in operation, a clerical error in an enrollment report that went to the state led to the school being reimbursed $300,000 to $400,000 less than it should have been the following year. Ms. Frederick said the special education director at the time made the mistake in the filing.

"I held that school together for all of these huge hits that we took, and now they're trying to make it about finance?" she said Monday. "I didn't want this school to fail."

She said she may have inadvertently started the downward spiral this fall by telling the state that enrollment was lower than expected. She did so in order to avoid receiving a bigger check from the state than the school should have gotten, she said. When the state Department of Elementary and Secondary Education saw that enrollment was low, it asked for more financial information. Then the school started cutting services and planned to lay her off, and Commerce Bank froze the school's line of credit.

Ms. Frederick has not been a popular figure at the school. During the contentious meeting that ultimately closed the school, she sat at the dais with other school leaders while insults and allegations were thrown at her.

One of the school's former executive directors, David Chauvette, said in a telephone interview from New Hampshire Monday that he had concerns about Ms. Frederick exceeding her job description while he was there. He had the authority to fire her, but his problems with her were secondary to his problems with the board, he said. He left because "of the board and her and a whole host of other things."

"My view going in … (was that) these are fragile kids … Basically, you love them, you give them a certain level of comfort, because they're not going to perform on the MCAS test until you know that you respect them. And demeaning them and picking on them for dress code violations was not the big thing, but certain members of the board and Ms. Frederick disagreed."

Mr. Chauvette said a small school in Worcester is "generally still a good idea, but it's the way you carry it out."

When the school closed, it left about 160 students looking for a new school. The Worcester public school system was scheduled to have an open house for them Monday night at North High School to talk about enrollment in the public school system. The Spirit of Knowledge board of trustees will meet at 6:30 p.m. Tuesday at Spirit of Knowledge to vote on the next steps in the shutdown, according to Barrington Henry, board chairman.